Europe and its phantom troops

It is time to be a bit more sceptical about Europe's "surprise failure" to provide troops for an international force in southern Lebanon?

One of the few:Â a French soldier from UNIFIL, Tyre

Ever since France "stunned" the UN, Israel and the Americans with her decision to send just 200 new troops to beef up the exisiting UN force (rather than the thousands promised), I've been waiting for someone to ask did Paris actually ever intend sending those thousands of troops, any time soon?

Or was it all a negotiating gambit, intended to achieve France's overwhelming policy goal at that moment a ceasefire, and the quickest possible halt to Israeli airstrikes on her former colonial subjects in Lebanon?

I, for one, find it hard to take at face value French (and Italian, and Spanish, and Belgian etc) protestations that the only sticking point is the lack of a clear mandate for the beefed up UN force, and the trickiness of disarming Hezbollah.

Or rather, I do believe Paris, Madrid, Rome, Brussels and the rest, when they say they are deeply concerned about the dangers of sending their troops into a messy situation, with no clear rules of engagement, and armed Hezbollah fighters biding their time indoors, in every other village.

The governments of Europe would not be doing their jobs if they were not spooked by those problems. I have little time for some bloggers, like Little Green Footballs et al lazily assuming that cowardice is the root cause of Europe's hesitation. I suspect the real cause is politics. That may not be much prettier than cowardice, in some cases, but it is different.

My problem is this, I cannot quite believe that the lack of a clear mandate for the UN force came as a surprise to any of the European governments now swooning around, saying they are shocked-shocked-shocked to realise how dangerous the mission might be. Nor can they possibly have believed the glib assertions that the UN force would have as a core mission the disarming of Hezbollah.

Or put the thought a different way. If I were a French/Italian/Spanish minister, it seems possible to me that my urgent objectives a couple of weeks back would have been the following: stop the Israeli bombing as soon as possible, stop the Hezbollah rockets firing, secure a halt in fighting on the ground, and make a resumption of Israeli bombing as tricky as possible. Then, way further down the list, think about what can be done with Hezbollah, with a strong bias towards thinking that the solution lies in dialogue and political co-operation, rather than combat.

If those are your objectives, then wouldn't it make sense to talk up a notional international force in order to stop the fighting/bombing, then stand back and let the Lebanese military go in alone?

The Lebanese army may have neither the ability nor the will to disarm Hezbollah, but if you never truly believed disarming the militia was possible, that would not matter. What you would have achieved is a halt in the fighting, so Europe can get on with what it prefers, which is talking.